At RWA 2014, one of the signature breakfast speakers this year was the marvelous Cindy Ratzlaff of Brand New, Brand You. She discussed – in vivid detail – her Social Book Marketing Strategy. Of course, I’m not going to go into extensive detail and list everything she said – you should click on the above link to get her full strategy – but I will hit the high points that resonated with me.
The most important aspect of this strategy is recognizing that you, the author, are the BRAND. You want to promote YOU. You are the creator of your books, but by promoting yourself as a brand, you capture reader and follower loyalty and get recognized by your name. Name recognition, like word of mouth, is a powerful product motivator for people to purchase what you are selling – namely, your books.
By utilizing FACEBOOK as a marketing tool you can develop what Cindy calls “your ideal Tribe,” or the people who want to follow you. Right now I have a regular Facebook page. I have “friends,” personal photos, etc, all the things you are supposed to have on the site to be socially connected with your friends and family. But, if you are a professional author and your name is your brand, you should have a professional Facebook page, devoted to you, the brand. Using myself, I would have a secondary page titled Peggy Jaeger, Author. On this page I would have all the information regarding my books – the ones that are currently out and in print and the ones that are coming up for publication ( Dearest God, are you listening to this?) Links to my blog, and my other sites would also be on this page so that anyone can find me and find out about me, the brand of Peggy Jaeger, Author. Apparently, Facebook is the number 1 social networking site, still. But your branding advertising isn’t isolated to just this site. Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google+ even using You Tube, are all ways you can promote your brand.
Cindy’s lecture was fascinating. She described the scope and power the internet has in promoting yourself in ways that I don’t think I ever even considered, much less knew I could do.
Like everything else that I attended at RWA 2014, Cindy Ratzlaff’s session will stick in my mind for years to come.
Peggy Jaeger, Author 
Interesting and worthwhile reading this post but… and this is only me speaking – I find that having too many social media sites not only eats time, but distracts from what I love doing, writing and creating. So I focus on Twitter, blogging and a little FB. Do you think I should be on more sites?
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I think it depends on what you are trying to sell. She maintains that the more people who can find out about you, in whatever way they can, is an effective marketing campaign tool. If you get a lot of activity from new people on the sites you use, than that may be enough for you. If you want to reach more people, it may not.
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